One Butt Cheek at a Time -- Amber Kizer

On English Class:

We're supposed to compare and contrast Edgar Allan Poe and Ernest Hemingway.

I title my paper "The Crackhead and the Suicidal Alkie."  Mr Slater looks over my shoulder, wheezes through his chin-length nose hair and tells me, "That won't do."

On Thongs:

Please keep your thong in your pants.  It's not sexy.  It's not cute.  It's underwear.  To be worn under.  You want to accessorize an outfit, get new shoes.

On Sex Ed:

Is there anything worse than sex ed teachers who haven't had any since Truman was president?  Plausibility, people, please!  Last year, Mr. Fritz subbed on the day they talked to us about sexually transmitted diseases and he called them "Steds" the whole time.  It's hard to take sex ed seriously when the teachers haven't even wiggled their stuff in this millennium.

Yes, it's funny.  But it has never taken me this long to read a Pink Book.  Never, ever.

I started it last week and just barely finished it this morning -- not because I didn't enjoy it, but because something kept misfiring in my brain that prevented me from remembering anything I'd previously read.  Seriously -- I would pick it up, flip to my bookmark, and be clueless as to what was happening.  I read the first fifty pages three times.  THREE TIMES.

It might be because it isn't really a plot-driven book.  But the thing is, it's not really character driven, either -- Gert doesn't really change that much over the course of her 300 pages.  She figures out masturbation and eyebrow plucking, but that's about it.

The story is mostly episodic, and the narrative is interspersed with Gert's Rant and Rave essays.  She's a sophomore.  Her best friend, Adam, is gay and just beginning to figure out a new (his first) relationship.  So she's feeling some jealousy about his divided attention, while also carrying a few of her own crushes.  Gert was a "surprise" baby -- her mother was 45 and her father was 60 when they found out they were going to have another child -- and because of that, she feels that she's mostly on her own when it comes to questions about sex and just... socializing.

So, yeah.  As I said, some of it is really funny -- I laughed out loud a few times -- but it's pretty uneven, and overall, not particularly memorable.